But in Iran the opposite happened when a youth team player who was tired of receiving insults from the (pretty sparse) stands was caught on video scaling a fence and setting about the abusive supporter.

His team-mates chased after the angry player but it took them a fair bit of time to get to him and put a stop to the attack – given they had to scale a 10-foot-high fence first.

The match in Tabriz, said to have been between two academy teams, was far from a high-profile one but it will certainly make some fans think twice before abusing players again. That is, if they’re at a pretty empty stadium of course, rather than in the ‘safer’ environment of being surrounded by hundreds of like-minded fans who are also venting their spleens too.